Would you pay ten bucks per month for the chance to access thousands of school papers that your teachers won't find with a simple Google search? Essayrunner.com is betting that some folks will, and it is using the Gnutella P2P network to build a business based on this idea.
The site is basically a giant archive of essays, currently promising access to over 140,000 school papers. There are dozens of essay sites with names like Duenow.com out there, and many students have started to upload papers to sites like Scribd. Essayrunner however offers an interesting twist: The site scours the Gnutella P2P network for essays shared via Limewire and similar file sharing clients. From Essayrunner.com:
"Because of Limewire's complex distributed nature most of the essays are not available on the network at any given time. EssayRunner scours the network for files 24 hours a day 7 days a week so you don't have to. EssayRunner is a mirror for Limewire content. "
A site like Essayrunner obviously brings up a whole bunch of legal issues. Most people use Limewire to download music and videos, and documents are more often than not shared accidentally (in fact, newer versions of Limewire don't share any documents by default to prevent inadvertent file sharing.)
Essayrunner does have a take-down policy, promising to remove any content at the request of the original author, but one has to wonder whether such an author will ever know that their articles are hosted on Essayrunner in the first place.
But wait, that's not all: Adding to the murky picture is the fact that the owner of the Essayrunner.com domain previously tried to spam file sharing networks in order to prevent copyright infringement. He started a Sourceforge project called kNewt about a year ago that was supposed to scour torrent sites for popular file names and then pollute Gnutella with fake files using these names. From the kNewt website:
"For several years open source developers have continued to release versions of p2p software that protect against varied threats, such as spam, but fail to prevent the distribution of copyright files. Should open source software create problems or solve them? Should open source solutions that are mainly used to subvert copyrights be hosted on sourceforge?"
Luckily, his plea for deleopers to "corrode the effectiveness of the Gnutella network to distribute pirated works" got completely ignored, and kNewt never evolved beyond the concept stage. After all, how would Essayrunner have found all those papers in a network of rusty tubes?
The site is basically a giant archive of essays, currently promising access to over 140,000 school papers. There are dozens of essay sites with names like Duenow.com out there, and many students have started to upload papers to sites like Scribd. Essayrunner however offers an interesting twist: The site scours the Gnutella P2P network for essays shared via Limewire and similar file sharing clients. From Essayrunner.com:
"Because of Limewire's complex distributed nature most of the essays are not available on the network at any given time. EssayRunner scours the network for files 24 hours a day 7 days a week so you don't have to. EssayRunner is a mirror for Limewire content. "
A site like Essayrunner obviously brings up a whole bunch of legal issues. Most people use Limewire to download music and videos, and documents are more often than not shared accidentally (in fact, newer versions of Limewire don't share any documents by default to prevent inadvertent file sharing.)
Essayrunner does have a take-down policy, promising to remove any content at the request of the original author, but one has to wonder whether such an author will ever know that their articles are hosted on Essayrunner in the first place.
But wait, that's not all: Adding to the murky picture is the fact that the owner of the Essayrunner.com domain previously tried to spam file sharing networks in order to prevent copyright infringement. He started a Sourceforge project called kNewt about a year ago that was supposed to scour torrent sites for popular file names and then pollute Gnutella with fake files using these names. From the kNewt website:
"For several years open source developers have continued to release versions of p2p software that protect against varied threats, such as spam, but fail to prevent the distribution of copyright files. Should open source software create problems or solve them? Should open source solutions that are mainly used to subvert copyrights be hosted on sourceforge?"
Luckily, his plea for deleopers to "corrode the effectiveness of the Gnutella network to distribute pirated works" got completely ignored, and kNewt never evolved beyond the concept stage. After all, how would Essayrunner have found all those papers in a network of rusty tubes?
France's government is gearing up for a new version of the controversial HADOPI legislation that would force ISPs to disconnect file sharers after three offenses. HADOPI's original version was struck down by France's Constritutional Council earlier this month because it enabled rights holders to police P2P networks without a judge's oversight. The council ruled that this procedure, also known as Three Strikes, was unconstitutional because it didn't guarantee suspected offenders a fair trial.
A new version of the law currently proposed by the French government would address these concerns by having a judge decide whether or not a file sharer should be disconnected. These decisions would however be made in a fast track trial that would only give a judge five minutes for each case on average. All in all, each case should require about 45 minutes of work, according to an official government study, Futurezone.at is reporting.
That doesn't sound like much time at all, but it still adds up, especially if you want put a dent into the phenomenon of millions of users sharing files online. The original HADOPI plans called for 250,000 blocked Internet accounts per year. The new proposal is slightly less ambitious and only calls for 50,000 decisions per year. The government study still estimates that it would take 109 new full-time positions, including 26 judges, to deal with these cases. One can easily imagine the total cost to reach tens of millions of dollars.
We'll have to wait and see whether French politicians are still eager to support the bill with this price tag attached. France wouldn't be the first country to drop Three Strikes because it's simply too expensive. British regulators estimated earlier this year that implementing Three Strikes would cost about 2.5 million GBP per year. The UK government eventually abandoned the idea of Three Strikes and is now favoring solutions that would require less oversight.
A new version of the law currently proposed by the French government would address these concerns by having a judge decide whether or not a file sharer should be disconnected. These decisions would however be made in a fast track trial that would only give a judge five minutes for each case on average. All in all, each case should require about 45 minutes of work, according to an official government study, Futurezone.at is reporting.
That doesn't sound like much time at all, but it still adds up, especially if you want put a dent into the phenomenon of millions of users sharing files online. The original HADOPI plans called for 250,000 blocked Internet accounts per year. The new proposal is slightly less ambitious and only calls for 50,000 decisions per year. The government study still estimates that it would take 109 new full-time positions, including 26 judges, to deal with these cases. One can easily imagine the total cost to reach tens of millions of dollars.
We'll have to wait and see whether French politicians are still eager to support the bill with this price tag attached. France wouldn't be the first country to drop Three Strikes because it's simply too expensive. British regulators estimated earlier this year that implementing Three Strikes would cost about 2.5 million GBP per year. The UK government eventually abandoned the idea of Three Strikes and is now favoring solutions that would require less oversight.
The first thing that came to my mind today when I was reading the headlines about the sale of the Pirate Bay was Kazaa. Okay, that's not true. The first thing probably was something like "HOLY SHIT!!!" And then I had to think of Kazaa.
Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom sold their wildly popular file sharing network in the midst of a legal battle with Hollywood and the record companies, essentially saving their ass, securing a way to move forward and found Skype and Joost.
Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg are now trying to sell their site just weeks after Swedish court handed them jail terms, and the news broke only days after they failed to get a retrail based on the claim that the judge was biased. However, there's one very important difference:
The Kazaa case was civil litigation, and and the center of the case was Fasttrack BV, a company founded by Friis and Zennstrom. The duo dropped out of their lawsuit by simply selling the assets and closing the company.
The Pirate Bay lawsuit on the other hand was a criminal case against four individuals, and not a corporate entity. That means that the new owners won't actually inherit any part of the lawsuit. They're essentially starting with a clean slate, as I wrote today on Newteevee.com.
The original owners on the other hand may just have pretty much killed their chances to get the original verdict overturned. Sure, a jury may eventually decide that this isn't really a crime worth a prison sentence, but they'll also ask: If this was really legal, then why did you sell it?
That's obviously a very different outcome than the Kazaa sale. To me it looks much more like the Pirate Bay guys are taking the fall to potentially save the site, and put some more rubust infrastructure in place that would help to keep other sites safe as well.
Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom sold their wildly popular file sharing network in the midst of a legal battle with Hollywood and the record companies, essentially saving their ass, securing a way to move forward and found Skype and Joost.
Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg are now trying to sell their site just weeks after Swedish court handed them jail terms, and the news broke only days after they failed to get a retrail based on the claim that the judge was biased. However, there's one very important difference:
The Kazaa case was civil litigation, and and the center of the case was Fasttrack BV, a company founded by Friis and Zennstrom. The duo dropped out of their lawsuit by simply selling the assets and closing the company.
The Pirate Bay lawsuit on the other hand was a criminal case against four individuals, and not a corporate entity. That means that the new owners won't actually inherit any part of the lawsuit. They're essentially starting with a clean slate, as I wrote today on Newteevee.com.
The original owners on the other hand may just have pretty much killed their chances to get the original verdict overturned. Sure, a jury may eventually decide that this isn't really a crime worth a prison sentence, but they'll also ask: If this was really legal, then why did you sell it?
That's obviously a very different outcome than the Kazaa sale. To me it looks much more like the Pirate Bay guys are taking the fall to potentially save the site, and put some more rubust infrastructure in place that would help to keep other sites safe as well.
The sale of The Pirate Bay to a Swedish software company, which plans to revamp the site and launch a new business model to compensate rights holders, has most everyone in the P2P community scratching their heads today. Global Gaming Factory X announced that it will buy the site for roughly $8 million, along with Swedish P2P solutions provider Peerialism, which has been developing BitTorrent-based distribution solutions for P2P streaming and downloads. The plan is apparently to use Peerialism’s technology for the next generation of The Pirate Bay.
Countless file-sharing users are now asking: Where does this leave us? Some are wondering if it will lead to the BitTorrent meltdown that we’ve been hearing so much about in the wake of the Pirate Bay lawsuit. And what will happen to all that money? Continue reading on Newteevee.com.
Countless file-sharing users are now asking: Where does this leave us? Some are wondering if it will lead to the BitTorrent meltdown that we’ve been hearing so much about in the wake of the Pirate Bay lawsuit. And what will happen to all that money? Continue reading on Newteevee.com.
Limewire is encouraging its users to download and share videos documenting the protests against the Iranian election.
The company's P2P client started to display a splash screen late last week that asks users to add videos about the protests in Iran to their shared folders, explaining:
"Iran has been limiting its own citizens' and the world's access to coverage of the post-election protests by blocking sites distributing such material. Peer-to-peer software, like Lime Wire, provides access to critical information and coverage of the events in a manner that the Iranian government cannot effectively block."
Users that click on the splash screen are automatically starting to download a zipped 110 MB archive of videos from Iran. The Zip file comes straight from Limewire's servers, and users are encouraged to unzip and then share it. Some of the videos are pretty graphic, and most of it is clearly shot with mobile phone cameras or small photo cameras. Of course, you'll probably find most of these videos on Youtube as well - unless you're in Iran, and Youtube is blocked ...
I wrote previously about the way P2P networks and file sharing sites are becoming increasingly important in distributing information about the protest movement in Iran. Videos of the demonstrations as well as the violent crackdowns on protesters have been circulating via BitTorrent, and the folks behind the Pirate Bay have even launched a web forum in support of the Iranian opposition.
Limewire doesn't go that far, but the company wants to take a clear stance against attempts by the current Iranian regime to suppress information about the protests:
"The Iranian government has been limiting the free flow of information in the wake of their presidential elections. Lime Wire takes no stance on the election itself, but we strongly believe in internet and information freedom."
The company's P2P client started to display a splash screen late last week that asks users to add videos about the protests in Iran to their shared folders, explaining:
"Iran has been limiting its own citizens' and the world's access to coverage of the post-election protests by blocking sites distributing such material. Peer-to-peer software, like Lime Wire, provides access to critical information and coverage of the events in a manner that the Iranian government cannot effectively block."
Users that click on the splash screen are automatically starting to download a zipped 110 MB archive of videos from Iran. The Zip file comes straight from Limewire's servers, and users are encouraged to unzip and then share it. Some of the videos are pretty graphic, and most of it is clearly shot with mobile phone cameras or small photo cameras. Of course, you'll probably find most of these videos on Youtube as well - unless you're in Iran, and Youtube is blocked ...
I wrote previously about the way P2P networks and file sharing sites are becoming increasingly important in distributing information about the protest movement in Iran. Videos of the demonstrations as well as the violent crackdowns on protesters have been circulating via BitTorrent, and the folks behind the Pirate Bay have even launched a web forum in support of the Iranian opposition.
Limewire doesn't go that far, but the company wants to take a clear stance against attempts by the current Iranian regime to suppress information about the protests:
"The Iranian government has been limiting the free flow of information in the wake of their presidential elections. Lime Wire takes no stance on the election itself, but we strongly believe in internet and information freedom."
Joost has announced that it is going to allow third-party developers to add Flash widgets to its video player soon. The Joost Labs blog this week previewed a widget that adds keyword-based Twitter search results to a video. Joost wants to eventually release a widget API that will expose some of the underlying video’s metadata and make it possible to integrate these widgets within the Joost Flash player.
This isn’t the first time Joost is toying with widgets. The company’s P2P-based video application also featured a widget API, but few wanted to develop for a player that had no user base. However, Joost has clearly been thinking about how to make widgets work in the past few years, and some of these ideas could lead to interesting results. Continue reading on Newteevee.com.
This isn’t the first time Joost is toying with widgets. The company’s P2P-based video application also featured a widget API, but few wanted to develop for a player that had no user base. However, Joost has clearly been thinking about how to make widgets work in the past few years, and some of these ideas could lead to interesting results. Continue reading on Newteevee.com.
Gigaom Pro is featuring an article of mine today, and the tag line is "Music and movie downloaders have more than once proven to be on the bleeding edge of connected consumer tech." It's available to subscribers only, but this short preview might give you an idea of what it's all about ... wait, you're already a subscriber? Then let me now what you think about it!
Rapidshare has announced that it's going to appeal a recent court verdict that would force the company to establish stricter filters for copyrighted content. Hamburg's District Court ruled earlier this month that Rapidshare has to remove 5000 musical works that are part of the catalog of the German music rights group GEMA.
The court also found that Rapidshare isn't doing enough to prevent the repeated upload of previously removed works. Rapidshare would have to figure out stricter controls to make sure that these 5000 titles won't get uploaded again.
One of the issues that keeps popping up in these conflicts are links shared in third party forums. GEMA had previously told the courts that it had developed a software to scour web forums and extract links to content shared on Rapidshare. The company however doubts that this software is working:
"It's questionable wether the application can deal with mechanisms to prevent the scraping of links, open encrypted files, accurately indetify audio files or find links in forums that can't be accessed by search engines."
Rapidshare CEO Bobby Chang added that GEMA fighting a futile war that alienates it's own customers. "GEMA is trying to turn back time," he added.
The court also found that Rapidshare isn't doing enough to prevent the repeated upload of previously removed works. Rapidshare would have to figure out stricter controls to make sure that these 5000 titles won't get uploaded again.
One of the issues that keeps popping up in these conflicts are links shared in third party forums. GEMA had previously told the courts that it had developed a software to scour web forums and extract links to content shared on Rapidshare. The company however doubts that this software is working:
"It's questionable wether the application can deal with mechanisms to prevent the scraping of links, open encrypted files, accurately indetify audio files or find links in forums that can't be accessed by search engines."
Rapidshare CEO Bobby Chang added that GEMA fighting a futile war that alienates it's own customers. "GEMA is trying to turn back time," he added.
Newly elected Pirate Party representative Christian Enstroem will join the group of the European Greens in the EU parliament. The party reportedly got offers to join a number of groups, including a coalition of liberal parties and a leftist group. Representatives of the Green party group had this to say about their new member:
"The Greens/EFA Group is delighted to welcome the Swedish Pirate Party, which shares our principles and values in defending internet users' rights. Christian Engstroem will have an independent status within our group and he has indicated he will support the Greens/EFA position in areas where the Pirate Party has no agenda."
The Greens currently have a total of 54 members in the European parliament. Joining this group should give Engstroem considerably more influence that figthing it out as a lone wolf. It's unclear how the Pirate party's members and voters will take the announcement that Enstroem is going to support Green issues.
However, at least two supporters of the two movements should be qite happy about this decision: The Pirate Bay's Peter Sunde aka brokep had announced that he was going to support the Greens in the recent EU election, whereas his partner in crime (no pun intended) Fredrik Neij aka Tiamo had thrown his support behind the Pirate Party.
"The Greens/EFA Group is delighted to welcome the Swedish Pirate Party, which shares our principles and values in defending internet users' rights. Christian Engstroem will have an independent status within our group and he has indicated he will support the Greens/EFA position in areas where the Pirate Party has no agenda."
The Greens currently have a total of 54 members in the European parliament. Joining this group should give Engstroem considerably more influence that figthing it out as a lone wolf. It's unclear how the Pirate party's members and voters will take the announcement that Enstroem is going to support Green issues.
However, at least two supporters of the two movements should be qite happy about this decision: The Pirate Bay's Peter Sunde aka brokep had announced that he was going to support the Greens in the recent EU election, whereas his partner in crime (no pun intended) Fredrik Neij aka Tiamo had thrown his support behind the Pirate Party.
This could be a big story in the making: JLM Pacific Epoch is reporting that Chinese search giant Baidu is about to release a dedicated P2P search offering. The article, which is literally just two and a half lines long, reads:
"A Baidu (Nasdaq:BIDU) insider said the company plans to release a peer-to-peer (P2P) search service at p2p.baidu.com soon, reports Sohu."
The search site is supposed to offer results from Easymule, which is a Chinese Emule mod published by the folks of the popular Chinese Edonkey link indexing site VeryCD. It's not clear whether this means that Baidu will just search VeryCD, or actually scour the Emule network for content.
Either way, it's an interesting development. The court case against the Pirate Bay led to many comparisons between the torrent site and Google, which the search engine promptly denied. Baidu on the other hand seems to have no problems with becoming a competition for P2P search engines.
"A Baidu (Nasdaq:BIDU) insider said the company plans to release a peer-to-peer (P2P) search service at p2p.baidu.com soon, reports Sohu."
The search site is supposed to offer results from Easymule, which is a Chinese Emule mod published by the folks of the popular Chinese Edonkey link indexing site VeryCD. It's not clear whether this means that Baidu will just search VeryCD, or actually scour the Emule network for content.
Either way, it's an interesting development. The court case against the Pirate Bay led to many comparisons between the torrent site and Google, which the search engine promptly denied. Baidu on the other hand seems to have no problems with becoming a competition for P2P search engines.
The German music rights association GEMA has announced yet another court verdict against Rapidshare. Hamburg's district court ordered Rapidshare to remove 5000 songs that are part of GEMA's repertoire. The one-click-hoster also has to make sure that the titles won't be published by its users in the future, according to an article on heise.de.
Rapidshare has already been using a MD-5 hash to identify uploads and block files that the service previously had to take down. However, the court now found that these measures are not enough to actively prevent copyright infringement.
The court decision has apparently not been published yet, and Rapidshare told heise.de that it wasn't able to comment on any details until it had seen the decision. However, CEO Bobby Chang went on record saying that court decisions like these often get overturned.
Rapidshare has been having a mixed record with court cases brought against them by rights holders. The company was able to dodge a bullet when a court forced it in 2007 to simply police a single link site that has since shut down. However, the same court that now sided with GEMA also ordered the company to proactively check uploads for infringement and monitor users that previously published infringing content.
Rapidshare has since started to keep a closer eye on its uploaders, an in fact been in the headlines for providing the contact information of an uploader to law enforcement officials. The company reacted to this by finally publishing a privacy policy earlier this month.
Rapidshare has already been using a MD-5 hash to identify uploads and block files that the service previously had to take down. However, the court now found that these measures are not enough to actively prevent copyright infringement.
The court decision has apparently not been published yet, and Rapidshare told heise.de that it wasn't able to comment on any details until it had seen the decision. However, CEO Bobby Chang went on record saying that court decisions like these often get overturned.
Rapidshare has been having a mixed record with court cases brought against them by rights holders. The company was able to dodge a bullet when a court forced it in 2007 to simply police a single link site that has since shut down. However, the same court that now sided with GEMA also ordered the company to proactively check uploads for infringement and monitor users that previously published infringing content.
Rapidshare has since started to keep a closer eye on its uploaders, an in fact been in the headlines for providing the contact information of an uploader to law enforcement officials. The company reacted to this by finally publishing a privacy policy earlier this month.
There has been intense debate in the western press on how to deal with the graphic images that reach us these days from Iran. Matt Mireles of The Business Insider probably said it best today when he wrote:
"If it were up to CNN and the old school broadcast networks, you would have never heard of Neda, the 16-year-old Iranian girl. She was shot in the heart by Iranian Security Forces as the cell phone cameras rolled and her father stood by. More than some sophisticated Internet filtering program, these guardians of the TV screen were the real censors."
Mireles continued to that these pictures changed the way he viewed the ongoing protests in Iran, and embedded Youtube videos showing the murder - only to have them removed by his editor "for the sensitivity of our readers."
Granted, the Insider is still linking to the videos - but you'll have to log into Youtube and tell them you're over 18 if you follow the links. One has to wonder whether mainstream video sites will sooner or later start to remove some of this footage as well, or possibly lock them behind even higher walls.
Don't expect any of those sensitivity protections on P2P sites. The Pirate Bay has been vocal in its support for the protesting students of Iran with the launch of the Iran.whyweprotest.net forum, and the torrent site is also increasingly becoming a repository for citizen footage from Iran. Case in point, just take a look at this bog post listing more than 50 torrents with videos from Tehran.
"If it were up to CNN and the old school broadcast networks, you would have never heard of Neda, the 16-year-old Iranian girl. She was shot in the heart by Iranian Security Forces as the cell phone cameras rolled and her father stood by. More than some sophisticated Internet filtering program, these guardians of the TV screen were the real censors."
Mireles continued to that these pictures changed the way he viewed the ongoing protests in Iran, and embedded Youtube videos showing the murder - only to have them removed by his editor "for the sensitivity of our readers."
Granted, the Insider is still linking to the videos - but you'll have to log into Youtube and tell them you're over 18 if you follow the links. One has to wonder whether mainstream video sites will sooner or later start to remove some of this footage as well, or possibly lock them behind even higher walls.
Don't expect any of those sensitivity protections on P2P sites. The Pirate Bay has been vocal in its support for the protesting students of Iran with the launch of the Iran.whyweprotest.net forum, and the torrent site is also increasingly becoming a repository for citizen footage from Iran. Case in point, just take a look at this bog post listing more than 50 torrents with videos from Tehran.
